4th and long

In an editorial in the Augusta Chronicle over the weekend, the idea of an Iraq pullout was reduced to football analogies:

"Can you imagine a football team's quarterback telling the other team at halftime that he would stop trying to win with 15 minutes left in the game?"

So the Chronicle favors a timeline, as long as it's 60 minutes instead of just 45? I guess I can live with that. They went on to say:

"Making it even sillier, suppose the quarterback did that against his coach's wishes."

Imagine if you had a coach that insisted on handing off to the cheerleaders on every 4th and long. Would you second-guess his judgement? Wouldn't you think your quarterback might want to try throwing to a receiver, just once?

It's not just that the analogies are silly, it's that they're used at all. Sports analogies play to an uninformed populace by reducing a complex situation to something that's easily digestible. They sound good, and they're familiar. So what if they're not accurate? Yee haw! Sports! I can identify!

If the Chronicle wanted to do it right, they could have spoken about how little league games have a mercy rule, or how sometimes coaches just suck, and you need to go a different route. But I guess they don't hate America like I do. Because, ya know, how unAmerican to fire your coach.